Prediction in Photovoltaic Power by Neural Networks

The ability to forecast the power produced by renewable energy plants in the short and middle term is a key issue to allow a high-level penetration of the distributed generation into the grid infrastructure. Forecasting energy production is mandatory for dispatching and distribution issues, at the transmission system operator level, as well as the electrical distributor and power system operator levels. In this paper, we present three techniques based on neural and fuzzy neural networks, namely the radial basis function, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system and the higher-order neuro-fuzzy inference system, which are well suited to predict data sequences stemming from real-world applications. The preliminary results concerning the prediction of the power generated by a large-scale photovoltaic plant in Italy confirm the reliability and accuracy of the proposed approaches

Neuro-fuzzy knowledge processing in intelligent learning environments for improved student diagnosis

In this paper, a neural network implementation for a fuzzy logic-based model of the diagnostic process is proposed as a means to achieve accurate student diagnosis and updates of the student model in Intelligent Learning Environments. The neuro-fuzzy synergy allows the diagnostic model to some extent "imitate" teachers in diagnosing students' characteristics, and equips the intelligent learning environment with reasoning capabilities that can be further used to drive pedagogical decisions depending on the student learning style. The neuro-fuzzy implementation helps to encode both structured and non-structured teachers' knowledge: when teachers' reasoning is available and well defined, it can be encoded in the form of fuzzy rules; when teachers' reasoning is not well defined but is available through practical examples illustrating their experience, then the networks can be trained to represent this experience. The proposed approach has been tested in diagnosing aspects of student's learning style in a discovery-learning environment that aims to help students to construct the concepts of vectors in physics and mathematics. The diagnosis outcomes of the model have been compared against the recommendations of a group of five experienced teachers, and the results produced by two alternative soft computing methods. The results of our pilot study show that the neuro-fuzzy model successfully manages the inherent uncertainty of the diagnostic process; especially for marginal cases, i.e. where it is very difficult, even for human tutors, to diagnose and accurately evaluate students by directly synthesizing subjective and, some times, conflicting judgments

An Incremental Construction of Deep Neuro Fuzzy System for Continual Learning of Non-stationary Data Streams

Existing FNNs are mostly developed under a shallow network configuration having lower generalization power than those of deep structures. This paper proposes a novel self-organizing deep FNN, namely DEVFNN. Fuzzy rules can be automatically extracted from data streams or removed if they play limited role during their lifespan. The structure of the network can be deepened on demand by stacking additional layers using a drift detection method which not only detects the covariate drift, variations of input space, but also accurately identifies the real drift, dynamic changes of both feature space and target space. DEVFNN is developed under the stacked generalization principle via the feature augmentation concept where a recently developed algorithm, namely gClass, drives the hidden layer. It is equipped by an automatic feature selection method which controls activation and deactivation of input attributes to induce varying subsets of input features. A deep network simplification procedure is put forward using the concept of hidden layer merging to prevent uncontrollable growth of dimensionality of input space due to the nature of feature augmentation approach in building a deep network structure. DEVFNN works in the sample-wise fashion and is compatible for data stream applications. The efficacy of DEVFNN has been thoroughly evaluated using seven datasets with non-stationary properties under the prequential test-then-train protocol. It has been compared with four popular continual learning algorithms and its shallow counterpart where DEVFNN demonstrates improvement of classification accuracy. Moreover, it is also shown that the concept drift detection method is an effective tool to control the depth of network structure while the hidden layer merging scenario is capable of simplifying the network complexity of a deep network with negligible compromise of generalization performance.Comment: This paper has been published in IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy System

Data-driven Soft Sensors in the Process Industry

In the last two decades Soft Sensors established themselves as a valuable alternative to the traditional means for the acquisition of critical process variables, process monitoring and other tasks which are related to process control. This paper discusses characteristics of the process industry data which are critical for the development of data-driven Soft Sensors. These characteristics are common to a large number of process industry fields, like the chemical industry, bioprocess industry, steel industry, etc. The focus of this work is put on the data-driven Soft Sensors because of their growing popularity, already demonstrated usefulness and huge, though yet not completely realised, potential. A comprehensive selection of case studies covering the three most important Soft Sensor application fields, a general introduction to the most popular Soft Sensor modelling techniques as well as a discussion of some open issues in the Soft Sensor development and maintenance and their possible solutions are the main contributions of this work

A multilabel fuzzy relevance clustering system for malware attack attribution in the edge layer of cyber-physical networks

The rapid increase in the number of malicious programs has made malware forensics a daunting task and caused users’ systems to become in danger. Timely identification of malware characteristics including its origin and the malware sample family would significantly limit the potential damage of malware. This is a more profound risk in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), where a malware attack may cause significant physical damage to the infrastructure. Due to limited on-device available memory and processing power in CPS devices, most of the efforts for protecting CPS networks are focused on the edge layer, where the majority of security mechanisms are deployed. Since the majority of advanced and sophisticated malware programs are combining features from different families, these malicious programs are not similar enough to any existing malware family and easily evade binary classifier detection. Therefore, in this article, we propose a novel multilabel fuzzy clustering system for malware attack attribution. Our system is deployed on the edge layer to provide insight into applicable malware threats to the CPS network. We leverage static analysis by utilizing Opcode frequencies as the feature space to classify malware families. We observed that a multilabel classifier does not classify a part of samples. We named this problem the instance coverage problem. To overcome this problem, we developed an ensemble-based multilabel fuzzy classification method to suggest the relevance of a malware instance to the stricken families. This classifier identified samples of VirusShare, RansomwareTracker, and BIG2015 with an accuracy of 94.66%, 94.26%, and 97.56%, respectively

Diagnosis and decision-making for awareness during general anaesthesia

This is the post-print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below.We describe the design process of a diagnostic system for monitoring the anaesthetic state of patients during surgical interventions under general anaesthesia. Mid-latency auditory evoked potentials (MLAEPs) obtained during general anaesthesia are used to design a neuro-fuzzy system for the determination of the level of unconsciousness after feature extraction using multiresolution wavelet analysis (MRWA). The neuro-fuzzy system proves to be a useful tool in eliciting knowledge for the fuzzy system: the anaesthetist's expertise is indirectly coded in the knowledge rule-base through the learning process with the training data. The anaesthetic depth of the patient, as deduced by the anaesthetist from the clinical signs and other haemodynamic variables, noted down during surgery, is subsequently used to label the MLAEP data accordingly. This anaesthetist-labelled data, used to train the neuro-fuzzy system, is able to produce a classifier that successfully interprets unseen data recorded from other patients. This system is not limited, however, to the combination of drugs used here. Indeed, the similar effects of inhalational and analgesic anaesthetic drugs on the MLAEPs demonstrate that the system could potentially be used for any anaesthetic and analgesic drug combination. We also suggest the use of a closed-loop architecture that would automatically provide the drug profile necessary to maintain the patient at a safe level of sedation